Annoy some people... it doesn't annoy me, my mom, my aunt and a few others I know that have a Mac. Everyone who sees it... says wow.. it is like its alive. I think you should be able to give user control over it._________________

If they released a Cube with slightly above iMac specs with iMac prices and the ability to upgrade, I'd lay down the cash for it.

In my opinion, it wouldn't cannibalize sales for anything else.

I'm in the same boat with you man, I think they need to come out with one more model for there computers. between the mini and the mac pro. Just a headless tower thats priced somewhere around the imac. Put extra dive cages in it for easy upgrades and a pci-e slot to chuck in my own video card. Hell the name just writes itself... The MAC.

Have only 1 USB & FireWire on the front.. Put power button on the back. Make the power an external brick and make the power plug as small as the Minis. Lower it 2-3 inches. Change the layout of the ports on the back.

Make the whole thing aluminum, no polycarbonate top...

And an embossed Apple logo on the front...

And make the logo the power-on light. My son just bought the new iMac 20" and while I was impressed by the subtle power-on indicator, he said they should have combined it with the logo and I think he was right. But still, it beats a blazing, distractive LED in a darkened room while watching a movie.

the ford thunderbird started life in the fifties as a beautiful small barebones would be sports car, by the mid seventies it was an overweight semi luxury eyesore that had lost its way in the world. careful what you wish for. the quest for power can never be satisfied.

i think most people here are in the position of the early day hot-rodders they want something cheap that they can modify and tune to their liking and that is what mac could take advantage of and also still make a good profit on. i don't know much about the present graphic set up on the intel mac but if apple allowed each user to customize their own system by letting the end user set up the shared memory allocation for video in system preferences, would that solve the video card issue. in a way apple is sort of on the right track with the build to order idea they're just a little slow to offer the latest and best for the mini.

Here's what I had from before, with some minor updates to the text, specs (no FW800), and prices.
I guess I was a little optimistic with ship dates and the inexpensive mini solo :-(

Dan__ wrote:

One model, with BTO options, including the processor. In the base model, include the greater RAM that we discussed, the superdrive, mouse and keyboard, and well, if you must, throw another $39 profit in there. And, oh yeah, the remote. Here's what that looks like:

Here's what I had from before, with some minor updates to the text, specs (no FW800), and prices.
I guess I was a little optimistic with ship dates and the inexpensive mini solo

Dan__ wrote:

One model, with BTO options, including the processor. In the base model, include the greater RAM that we discussed, the superdrive, mouse and keyboard, and well, if you must, throw another $39 profit in there. And, oh yeah, the remote. Here's what that looks like:

Now that is a perfect mini tower design imho. But it doesn't need 2 optical drive bays, 1 would give the components more breathing space.

I would buy what you made in a new york minute.

The only physical improvement I'd like is the removal of the second optical bay and a white macbook pro type apple led on the front. Mind trying that on the design and reposting it? That would look incredible.

IMHO, this is the ONLY reason it would nice to have clones. Of course, we'd not get the apple logo pulsating . . . but we'd still get OS X and same really nice designs that don't have to be blessed by the Steve.

Therein lies the rub. I don't think Steve would ever allow any clone to look something like a Mac. So maybe we'd get some nice designs, but they wouldn't look anything like this, which is based off the mini design.

IMHO, this is the ONLY reason it would nice to have clones. Of course, we'd not get the apple logo pulsating . . . but we'd still get OS X and same really nice designs that don't have to be blessed by the Steve.

I think that is the reason why it is a good thing to be blessed by Steve. Imagine this Gateway computer with a "Mac OS X" sticker on it _________________